"The Boarded Window" saw its first major publication in 1909, when it was collected, along with most of the stories from 1891's Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, in the second volume of the Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, a 12-volume set. The majority of stories in the book, which had been republished in 1892 under the new title In the Midst of Life, concerned the Civil War, with the notable exceptions of the other world fantasies "An Inhabitant of Carcosa," "Haita the Shepherd," and "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot." In putting together his collected works, however, Bierce omitted any overtly supernatural tales from volume 2, placing them instead with other like stories in volume 3. At the same time, he added "The Boarded Window," which hints at the supernatural but does not truly involve it. Bierce scholar S.T. Joshi is one of the few to note this...